Winter Olympics (1 Viewer)

Purple Stickpin

Purple Stickpin

I do love me some speed skating, downhill, luge, bobsled and biathlon. Too bad NBC spends more time on the human interest crap than on the competition, but at least there's been some good stuff today.

I'd rather watch Richard Simmons oil himself up in my kitchen than watch figure skating, however.
 
They didnt hold back much in showing the tragedy of yesterday.Pretty vivid details for prime time.NBC hurtin for an audience will probably do anything at this point to survive.
 
I found it odd too. I didn't think they would show video of a guy being crushed by a concrete pillar on the network news, but obviously I was wrong.
 
Same here. I just read this article about it a few minutes ago.

Incidentally, I noticed the local LA news showed video of the run up until the second of impact and then they cut it. But the next shot was a photo of his dead body getting CPR.

To me, the video of the actual impact was less weird than showing the blood and seeing him laying there knowing he was already dead.
 
It was shown on TV over here too. The crash against the pillar, the blood, everything right in your face. It's weird, because they usually don't show people getting killed in accidents on TV.
 
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well, to lighten the mood around here, there's this:

During a press conference yesterday, U.S. Olympic snowboarder Graham Wantanabe fielded a question about what it feels like to the on the Olympic team.

"Try to imagine Pegasus mating with a unicorn and the creature that they birth. I somehow tame it and ride it into the sky in the clouds and sunshine and rainbows. That's what it feels like."
Click to expand...

guy pretty much just became my favorite athlete.
 
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I think that the opening was quite spectacular. What singes me is that they suddenly bring out the natives in such a light, when the reserves are in need of money to set up educational programs. If you walk down main and hastings, you get a different feel.
 
...Pegasus mating with a unicorn and the creature that they birth. I somehow tame it and ride it into the sky in the clouds and sunshine and rainbows....

2010 Chancepress Logo Contest is OVER !
 
Black Swan said:
I think that the opening was quite spectacular.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately I saw the opening as well (or fast forwarded through most of it, I should say). The "aboriginal" bullshit kind of infuriated me, and I can usually dismiss this kind of over-the-top, Elton John, Liberace, Wayland Flowers and Madame kind of "entertainment" as a harmless piffle floating thorough space. But spending 40 million dollars on a light show with a bunch of unemployed Canadian Broadway dancers pretending to be Indians really chapped my frozen ass.

But the highlight of the thing - come on, you know it - was the puffy beatnik slam-poetry goon explaining what Canada is. We were throwing in our own lines after a while:

WE HAVE TRAFFIC LIGHTS
DENTISTS
WOOD
TWO WAY ROADS
MOOSE AND MOOSEBURGERS

WE HAVE TREES AND SNOW
RETAIL STORES
SINGLE FAMILY HOMES
OBESITY ON PAR WITH ANY DEVELOPED NATION
MOTORCARS
HUNDREDS OF BLACK PEOPLE

You get the idea.

I don't know quite what to make of it all.
 
mjp said:
The "aboriginal" bullshit kind of infuriated me, But spending 40 million dollars on a light show with a bunch of unemployed Canadian Broadway dancers pretending to be Indians really chapped my frozen ass.
But the highlight of the thing - come on, you know it - was the puffy beatnik slam-poetry goon explaining what Canada is..
Click to expand...

But, that's my point.

I have no idea who the goon was. Probably the nephew of some government official, who can spell.

I live about 5 miles from the Mohawk reserve.
Every summer they hold a pow wow, a dance competition and meditation day with traditional food. It goes on for a weekend and hardly noticed.

pow wow 2.jpg pow wow.jpg
 
Yeah, I got your point. I'm agreeing. Growing up in Minnesota I saw how venerated and respected the tribes were. Which is to say, not at all. Indians were left to rot and die in the crumbling downtown areas, stumbling drunk and poor as dirt.

My great great grandmother was Oglala Sioux, and I moved to a little apartment in downtown St. Paul in 1978, when the only people left downtown after five o'clock on weekdays were me and the drunks, so a lot of this "look how we now love the natives" shit sticks in my craw. The reality, as you point out, was/is much different.

Before the whole casino thing caught on here in America I think a lot of people would have been happy to see all the natives die out and quit reminding them of all that messy shit that happened in the middle of the 19th century.
 
OK - smashing the windows of a retailer whose policies are unjust (selling blood diamonds for example) is just not the way to protest, is it ?

March down to their corporate HQ and make your point. The CEO's are the ones who are making the life or death decisions, not the commission-only salesperson who has to miss a day's work due to clean-up and repairs.
 
The whole protest thing is so fragmented. Downtown eastside, native rights, etc., and then what little good that might be done is wrecked with the actions of the violent (which, of course, I'm highlighting with the previous link). The cops spin, the protesters spin, the violent ones spin. It's tedious to listen to.

I guess I could provide links about the Native community being one of the hosts of these Winter Olympics. Or recommend an old book on how little has changed with the First Nations reservations' plight (google How A People Die).

But I remember going to the Downtown Eastside Residents Association offices as a smart mouthed social work student and having a strip torn off me by the founder, . That was back in 1977. I decided I wasn't a social worker, more an anti-social socialist at that point, and moved on to a few useless jobs, some I stuck with. At least with bus driving I can give a free ride or two (or three million and two) and do some good there. It adds up to absolutely nothing but, again, not much has changed down there for the past 30plus years.

Fuck, I don't know. It was surprising, and nice, to see my working friend Tom Hawken singing on the video link. Hardcore lefties all of them, the bastards.

And Canada won gold today on home soil for the first time. I liked that too.
 
mjp said:
But the highlight of the thing - come on, you know it - was the puffy beatnik slam-poetry goon explaining what Canada is. We were throwing in our own lines after a while:

HUNDREDS OF BLACK PEOPLE
Click to expand...
jesus christ, man. we've had a thousand black people in Canada for months now.

fuck! typical American!
 
well, alright then!

on topic: I didn't watch the opening ceremonies because I always have the same reaction to these types of things: bits I like, more bits I hate, and a whole lot I don't give a crap about.

spending hundreds of thousands to celebrate athletes who aren't allowed to get paid. look, but don't touch, you bastards! and while you're at it, throw yourself down a mountain and make your country proud!

well, they get paid in Gatorade and sneakers, I suppose.

boy, ain't I feisty and full of half-baked opinions today.
 
Only hundreds have ever been outside in daylight.

I went to Canada in 2004 and I only saw a few who came in on cruise ships for a couple of hours and it was during the night.

(edit) if you can't figure out what I'm talking about try reading more of the preceeding posts.
 
Nova Scotia has a fairly large black population, as we were an endpoint for the Underground Railway.
 
There was "Hogan's Alley", a black community in the downtown eastside.

And I don't know why they went with Shane Koyszan rather than . Molson is the official beer after all. Both readings are pretty similar. At least Joe practices brevity.
 
. Well isn't that unfortunate. He needs to expand his repertoire of hand gestures, that's the only critique I can offer. That and, "quit being a douchebag."

One day we will look back on that cliched, standard template for reading your angsty, crap poetry out loud with embarrassment, kind of the way we look at 1980s hairdos now.

That is my dream for the world.
 
he's dreadful. I just read Shane was discovered on you tube. just like Dane Cook! ugh.
 
Try watching that clip with the sound off - it's like he's conducting an invisible orchestra.

Lame
 
The way the Canadian competitors had loads more practice runs than their foreign counterparts for the luge just so they had a better chance of winning medals is something that should be looked at.
 
The cool thing about the Olympics for me is that despite little support people spend a good deal of their life to finish 18th or 32nd and maybe even 1st 2nd or 3rd.
I watched a Canadian skier fall then complete her run-that was cool.
I listened to an American skier say how he enjoyed people screaming that was cool.
Then I watched a biopic prior to the speed skating where the two favs-an American and a Canadian were profiled and presented as the two to beat only to be beaten by a South Korean-no biopic just a medal.
Sure Olympic organising rings of Hess too much at times but cheering for something anything feels real good and sometimes even inspires some to get off the couch the next day and try something for themselves-quit smoking walk 10000 steps a day volunteer take second job and if that happens well then maybe these and all Hess hyped events have value.
There that feels better-now I can settle down and watch the Canadian Hockey teams crush all comers.
 
My friend, Coop at Defeet (they make socks) is a sponsor of the Jamaican Alpine Ski team. It consists of one guy- Errol Kerr- from Truckee, CA. His father is Jamaican.

Also, I am in love with Lindsey Vonn.
 
There were a lot of bad falls yesterday, it must be all of that fake snow they're trucking in.

It looks like all of the snow went the the middle U.S. That's where the Olympics should have been.
 
There was a men's figure skater from Canada who was pretty laughable. He was falling and wobbling all over the place. I guess the ice is slippery.

On a related note, I wish they would stop calling the luge projectiles athletes. Or at least define exactly which athletic skills are necessary to lay down on a sled. I guess they have to hold their heads up a bit, and that could be very tiring. Otherwise, I don't get it.
 
Ah, and here I thought it was keeping your balance with an empty skull. I have a lot to learn about sports.
 

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